is a potential danger to the regime. It becomes known in the matter of weeks, because that's what the informers are looking for. If the cache survived for more than a few month, it was definitely with the permission of Saddam.

Think about the treatment of religion in Soviet Russia. It was essentially impossible to go to church between, say, 1937 and 1941. Then all of a sudden, Stalin needed a nationalistic ideology. Surviving preists (not only Ortodox, but others as well) were released from camps, Council for Affairs of Religious Cults got established (1944), and religion in Russia experienced a "revival". Of course, I have to use quotes here, because, for example, the Patriarch of Russian Orthodox CHurch was a high-level party appointee, "nomenclatura" of Politburo. But still, the Church could have buildings, print books and raise priests in relative safety.